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UFS Phoenix
To Table of Contents, or Fleet, or Kulina... Characters on the warship UFS Phoenix in The Spiral Wars Series, by Joel Shepherd *Key to abbreviations for quotation references ** R - Renegade -- (R-8) is quoted from Renegade ch. 8 ** DL - Drysine Legacy ** KV - Kantovan Vault ** D - Defiance the starship *a Fleet vessel *UFS Phoenix is “perhaps the most famous warship of the United Forces First Fleet" (R-1) *legendary battle-carrier *built of superior tech, a gift from humanity’s triumvirate allies, the advanced alo species *original specs include four assault shuttles with combat grapples starship pilots *Captain Marinol Pantillo: "Pantillo was one of the greatest names in the whole United Forces —the most successful warship captain of the last fifty years, in command of one of the most legendary vessels of ithe entire Triumvirate War.” (R-1) **“not a big man, tanned with Asian features that he claimed went back to someplace called the Philippines. His hair was greying, and he’d been alive for much of the war — one hundred and twenty seven standard Earth years, a very advanced age considering the reflexes required of a warship captain.” (R-1) **"Pantillo had many friends in Spacer Congress, and had been overlooked for Admiral many times because of his politics. Some talked about political ambitions, about furthering the cause of the Worlders, always unhappy with their under-representation in the corridors of true power." (R-1) **murdered, at Fleet HQ, on Homeworld (R-5) *Lieutenant Commander / Captain Erik Debogande **see Erik Debogande page *Commander Suli Shahaim — the eldest officer in a command position. First-shift Helm. "Helm’s job was to plot course tracks for the pilot (but Nav plots long-range jumps, etc) and watch all those things the pilot could not. When no command staff was available, Helm was next in line to fly the ship." (R-8) Trace had known Suli Shahaim for as long as she’d known anyone on Phoenix . She’d been Lieutenant Shahaim for that time, Captain Pantillo’s ever-reliable Helm, the old-navy term spacers insisted on using for ‘co-pilot’. Shahaim’s reputation was impeccable, and she was known as one of the most personable officers on the ship. Yet she was rarely seen down here in Assembly, because Shahaim was as spacer as they came, a Fleet officer from a long line of Fleet officers, and while her expertise was legendary, it was all ships, stations and performance specifications” (D) *Lieutenant Draper - brilliant, but young and inexperienced; second shift pilot in command *Lieutenant Dufresne / Giggles - Draper’s helm and co-pilot. “Dufresne was a known Fleet loyalist from a family of loyalists" ® Lieutenant Draper had even better Academy scores than he Erik did, but was green as grass. Lieutenant Prakesh had been second-shift Helm, but had been on PH-2 with Lieutenant Chia and Dean Chong when it was destroyed. That left another Academy whizz-kid, Second Lieutenant Dufresne, as Draper’s Helm and co-pilot. Kaspowitz had said drily that given some encouragement, experience, and a good bedtime story before sleepytime, they’d do fine. ® bridge officers *Lieutenant Wei Shilu — on coms, legal advisor, etc *Lieutenant Angela Lassa — coms on second shift, an expert on tavalai bureaucracy, laws, etc *Lieutenant Kaspowitz / Kaspo — first-shift Nav (not near trajectory Helm). Calculates gravity, jumps, black holes, hyper space, star systems, etc. Trace’s friend, and Captain Pantillo’s. A self-taught student of Spiral history. Older than Erik. **Tall and lanky with a big nose. “He was too tall for spaceships, really, and always looked hunched” (R-8). **Brilliant physicist: “Bree was no physicist on the level of Kaspowitz, but all bridge crew knew enough that they could teach it in university, at least.” (D) *Lieutenant Geish — on Scan. Older, stolid, initially doubtful but honest about it. "Both Shahaim and Geish were in their sixties, and had been doing this a very long time" (R-8) *Second Lieutenant Jiri — on Scan *Second Lieutenant Karli Abacha - on second-shift Scan (R-13) *Lieutenant Keshav Karle — Arms One. A young man. *Second Lieutenant Bree Harris — Arms Two. A young woman spacers, officers Engineering Department: *Lieutenant’s Rooke - Suddenly promoted to chief of Engineering. Young but brilliant. Likable. *Remy Hale - second-in-command of engineering. Erik’s friend. Intimate with Lieutenant Ahmed Alomaim. “Lisbeth liked Remy Hale —she was short, pretty and easy-going. And she was a good friend of Erik’s, from when Erik had been third-shift commander.”® *Petty Officer Kadi - young man in engineering. Hijacked State Department coms on Gomesh with Lieutenant Dale, etc. *Chenkov / Chenk - infiltrated the Kantovan Vault with Command Squad. “Spacer Chenkov did great credit to the entire Phoenix Engineering crew” (KV) *Tomlinski - Chenkov’s friend in engineering (KV) *Spacer Carlton - second-shift engineering (R-8) Medical: *Doc Suelo - ‘Doc’ Suelo ran med bay, technically he was Corpsman Master Petty Officer, but in Fleet tradition for a ship’s senior medico, ‘Doc’ was simpler" (R-8). **“A darker African shade than Trace. Faintly gray and vastly experienced. Phoenix was his fourth warship. He’d also run big city hospitals, frontier medical wards on outposts nobody had heard of, vast fleet station hospitals, etc.” (R-17) *Corpsman Rashni / Rash - one of Doc Suelo's five Corpsmen ® Operations: *Spacer Jason / Jace Reddin — midships operations. Badly wounded at Joma Station but rescued by Skah / Furball, Lisbeth, her bodyguard Carla, etc. (DL) Petty / Warrant Officers: *Chief Petty Officer Goldman — the ship’s second senior-most enlisted crew. In charge of catastrophic damage to ship. Seventy years in service, cool, composed, at home in space. (D) *Chief Petty Officer Taigo - worked with investigator Jokono “to see various steps taken to monitor Lawrence, Cho and Doraga’s other friends”(R-15) *Warrant Officer Chau *Warrant Officer Krish “The big dogs who truly ran the ship outside of the bridge, like Chief Petty Officer Goldman and Warrant Officers Chau and Krish...” (D) *etc. etc. incomplete list marine company *Battle cry: “Nine point nine!” “Nine point nine!” the others replied. Ten billion souls in Sol System when the krim hit Earth. Nine point nine billion dead. It had been humanity’s battle cry for the past thousand years, and the hacksaws weren’t the only ones who talked in numbers. (R-11) *Phoenix Company is 228 marines: "the entire two hundred and twenty-eight strong Phoenix marine complement"(R-5) *Major Trace Thakur **See Major Thakur Thakur’s Command Squad *"Trace’s command squad of eight including herself" (R-11). Major Thakur. First sergeant Stitch Willis, retired and reinlisted. Sixty-two years of service, on and off. Private Arime. Private Van. Private Jessica Roland (Skah’s friend). Private Anthony 'Bird' Kumar. Private Terez. Corporal Edward Rael /Cocky (best-looking) **The irreplacaable First Sergeant "Stitch" Willis had been replaced by sergeant Kono from Delta Platoon third squad” (R-19) Staff sergeant Gideon /Giddy Kono Five Platoons: "Phoenix’s marine company has five platoons, forty-four in each, plus Trace’s own Command Squad of eight, including herself. 228 total (R-5 and 11) *Squads and Sections within Platoons: Charlie Platoon One-Three (as the abbreviation had it for First Squad, Third Section of Charlie Platoon). *three squads of twelve in three sections of four, for thirty-six total. Add an eight man heavy squad for 44 per platoon” (R -11) "Trace rated all of her Lieutenants very highly — Dale at the top, for sheer experience, then Crozier, Zhi and Jalawi about equal in the middle, with Alomaim still a little green, but with enormous potential." Alpha Platoon *Lieutenant Ty Dale - Alpha Platoon leader and Phoenix Company's second-in-command after Major Thakur. "Dale was a thirty year veteran, and had an impressive row of medals on his chest" ® **"tall, blond, and dangerous...Erik had seen the man bite the head off a live tulik in a drinking session. He was a killer, bare-handed or with weapons,or with innocuous everyday items" (R-2) **"Lieutenant Dale, despite his officer’s bars, had started off as a private after a rough childhood on a frontier world, and earned an officer’s commission by still being alive after twenty years in the field."(R-2) *Sergeant Hall — second squad, Private "Benji" Carville. Kaur. Aram. etc. (R-5, 11) *First Squad: Lester ‘Woody’ Forrest (gentleman, former banker until divorce), Cilian ‘Tricky’ Tong, Peter ‘Spots’ Reddy (headed for jail when joined up), etc. *Sergeant Manjhi Bravo Platoon *Lieutenant Ahmed Alomaim - youngest of the platoon leaders. Loves engineer Remy Hale. *Private Brice. Private Ito. Private Cruze. etc., etc. *See Kantovan Vault scenes at the Tsubarata Charlie Platoon *Lieutenant Jalawi/Skeeta - "Of all Trace’s officers, Jalawi was the most frequently amused" (?) *Lance Corporal Lani Graf / Eggs - smart (see Defiance) *Lance Corporal Penn of Charlie Platoon, Second Squad, who had been personally escorting Lisbeth when things went bad on Joma Station. He joined at Joma Station with Hoon, Jersey, etc. *Peter Hoon - "A black-clad marine came forward, scarred and weathered, and saluted Trace and Erik. “Master Sergeant Peter Hoon, UFS Walker, UFS Claymore, UFS Five Junctions. Thirty-three years active duty, six years retired, volunteering for service.”(DL) "Sergeant Hoon does play well with others, which is good to know." (D) Delta Platoon *Lieutenant Jasmine Crozier - JC Crozier had been an officer in the marine corps for twelve years, all of them in combat. She’d been posted to Phoenix four years ago, when the previous commander of Delta Platoon had been killed in action. (DL) *Master Sergeant Tim Wong - Crozier's XO *Berg *Corporal Kess Echo Platoon *Lieutenant Chester Zhi - "For simple intellect, Lieutenant Zhi was probably the smartest of platoon commanders...with the rare and alarming habit of reading lots of difficult books and enjoying them. He’d been destined for either high command or a teaching position at the Academy or elsewhere." He has become Stan Romki’s friend and go-to-guy on spiral military history. *Sergeant Kerensky *Vijay Khan - corporal but which platoon? formerly Lisbeth’s bodyguard. “He had done eight years and risen to Staff Sergeant on Dragonfire before losing an arm in combat. That arm was cybernetic now” ® shuttle pilots Phoenix originally had four assault shuttles, armed for combat *PH-1 Lieutenant Trey Hausler - senior pilot, formation leader **co-pilot ensign Julie Yun *PH-2 destroyed *PH-3 Lieutenant Regan Jersey, hotshot, rejoined Phoenix at Joma Station (DL) **co-pilot ensign Singh, the oldest of Phoenix’s shuttle crew *PH-4 Lieutenant "Chunky" Toguchi, until UFS Starwind fired on PH-4 at Heuron / Hoffen Station, killing him (R-29) **co-pilot Ensign Steve Lee **Lieutenant Tif - PH-4 pilot, a Kuhsi female with fast reflexes *AT-7 - a civilian shuttle with varied pilots and copilots others *Lisbeth Debogande - Erik’s youngest sister; a recent engineering graduate and occasional pilot for her family’s civilian shuttles. *Jokono - Security for Debogande family; he came with Lisbeth. Formerly chief of investigations on two major trading stations. Old and wise. The interrogator was Jokono, one of Lisbeth’s four security guys. Jokono had been a high level police inspector before joining the personal Debogande security team for a significant pay raise. Interrogation, he’d said, was something of a speciality. ® *Hiroshi Uno - Hiro. Security for Debogande family; he came with Lisbeth. Former spy. “He was United Intelligence...His skillset’s a bit scary” ® *Carla - Lisbeth's bodyguard. Formerly a marine. Big. Tattooed. Married. *Vijay Khan - Lisbeth's bodyguard. Formerly a marine sergeant till he lost an arm -- replaced with a cybernetic arm. Now, Corporal Vijay Khan is a section leader *Professor Stan / Stanislaus Romki -- expert in historical linguistics and xenolinguistic connections “Who is Stanislav Romki?” Erik asked. “He’s a legend in xeno-sociology. Alien civilisations.” “Why haven’t I heard of him?” Linley smirked. “Because most of what he knows, he’s not allowed to publish. It’s classified —he works for Newtown University but he’s funded by Fleet, and they censor everything. He doesn’t have a choice but to accept their funding because Fleet blocks everyone else. He’s not even allowed to give lectures or take students anymore, not for decades. Most of the academic community’s forgotten about him, he’s purely a security asset. Fleet’s been trying to control him for years, but he goes rogue, wanders off, spends time with our ‘enemies’ and friends alike. Fleet love his research but are scared it’ll give us poor, weak-minded civilians the ‘wrong idea’ about our allies or something. Tried to recruit him into Fleet Intelligence or some other Intel branch, offered him heaps of money. . . . Romki always turns them down.” (R-25) *Tif - kuhsi. A pilot. Skah's mother. *Skah / Furball -- young kuhsi boy. Tif's son. Heir to Lord Kharghesh. *Styx - mysterious machine, AI, Drysine command unit Category:Characters